1858. Robert Southey to John Rickman, 25 January 1811

I trouble you with a large packet by this post, the property of my good Spanish Secr. who leaves London the 29th or 30th on his way to Cadiz, there to hold
an office correspondent to our Under Secr. of State for the foreign department. He promises me his correspondence, & a regular
supply of documents, & he leaves me as an earnest of this a collection of gazettes & other papers for the whole of the year
just expired. I regret much that I have not seen him. He has been of most essential service to me – I have made him all the return in
my power by adding the best of my operas to his luggage.

Thank you for the E. India Report, [1] & for the Burdett papers. [2] Your notes upon
Parl. Reform are now lying on my desk, to be introduced immediately after the foolish plan which he proposed in 1809, – a plan which
could do not no possible good. [3] It is downright absurdity to
suppose that the H. of C. can be a pure representative body while there is always a regular party organized against the Government of
the country, & I xx consequently semi in semi-alliance with the enemy. Such a state of things (which never
existed any where else, & as you will say could not exist here by but by favour of old Neptune) [4] was xxxx unknown to our old
laws of Parliament, – it is therefore a manifest fallacy to argue from those laws against practises which are rendered necessary by the
existing system, & without which there could be no Government. The evil which I wish to see remedied is the aggregation of landed
property which gives to such a man as our Lord Leviathan [5] here the command of whole counties, & enable such men as the D. of
Northumberland [6] to sing “We are seven” like
Wordsworths little girl, [7] into the ears of a minister, & demand for himself situations
which he is unfit for. – Something like our mortmain xxxxxxxx This is a worse evil than that which our mortmain
statutes [8] were
enacted to remedy, for it is gradually rooting out the yeomanry of the country, & dwindling the gentry into compleat political
insignificance. It is not parliamentary Reform which can touch this evil, – some farther limitation of entails, or a proper scale of
income taxation might. Concerning Parl. Reform indeed my views are much changed, – & Sir
F Burdetts scheme has not a little contributed to the alteration, elucidated as it is by all his subsequent conduct. The
phrase itself like Cath. Emancip. Is vox et præterea nihil. [9]

Curwens Bill [10] is a droll history. I compare his relationship to the Bill to that between Hyreus &
Orion, – he furnished the skin & the superior powers the contents. [11]

[1] In 1809 a Select Committee of the House of
Commons had enquired into how the East India Company appointed its officers. BACK

[2] Documents relating to the politician Sir
Francis Burdett, who had been imprisoned by the House of Commons in April–June 1810 for breach of privilege. BACK

[3] For Southey’s account of and opposition to Burdett’s
plan, Edinburgh Annual Register, for 1809, 2.1 (1811), 282–294. Burdett had proposed a ratepayer franchise, equal
electoral districts, shorter parliaments and general elections held on one day in all seats. BACK

[4] Neptune was the Roman god of the sea. Southey’s point is that only because Britain is protected from invasion by the
sea and the Navy can opposition politicians criticise the war with France so freely. BACK

[5] Possibly a reference to William Lowther. His income from his estates in Cumberland and Westmoreland was
estimated by contemporaries at nearly £100000 p.a., He controlled eight parliamentary seats, was the patron of thirty-two parishes
and was Lord Lieutenant of the two counties. BACK

[6] Hugh Percy, 2nd Duke of Northumberland (1742–1817; DNB). He
was a general and colonel of the Royal Horse Guards despite his mediocre military abilities. In a vote on the regency on 1 January
1811 four MPs connected to the Duke had voted against the government, hoping for favour from the Prince of Wales (George IV
(1762–1830; Prince Regent 1811–1820; King of the United Kingdom 1820–1830; DNB)). BACK

[8] Mortmain (‘dead hand’) statutes, e.g. those of 1279 and 1290, were designed to
limit the transfer of land to the Church, which could hold estates in perpetuity and thus build up huge landholdings. BACK

[9] ‘A voice and nothing more’; i.e.
fine words without any weight or meaning. BACK

[10] The Bill introduced in 1809 by the MP for Carlisle, John
Christian Curwen (1756–1828; DNB), for ‘“better securing the independence and purity of Parliament, by preventing the
procuring or obtaining seats by corrupt practices, and likewise more effectually to prevent bribery”’; see Edinburgh Annual
Register, for 1809, 2.1 (1811), 249–281. Curwen’s Bill did become law in the same year, but was less successful than his
contemporaries hoped or feared. BACK

[11] In legend, the widower
Hyreus asked the gods for a son. They obliged and gave him a bull’s hide full of water, which he buried in the earth for nine
months. When the hide was dug up and opened, the infant Orion emerged. Southey drew on the same comparison in his assessment of
Curwen and his Bill in Edinburgh Annual Register, for 1809, 2.1 (1811), 281. BACK